Notions in Their Heads: Exploring the Discrepant Selves of African-American Female Entrepreneurs.

This research explores internal motivations o f entrepreneurship through identifying self-characteristics and probing self-discrepancies. A content analysis process examined interviews with 20 African American female entrepreneurs, and identified 259 self-characteristics from participants ' own standpoint and 94 self-characteristics from others 'standpoint. Coding results reveal entrepreneurs describe themselves with positive self-characteristics, not associated with their race or gender. Nearly the opposite was true when entrepreneurs mentioned self-characteristics from others' standpoint, which were more negative and had greater mentions o f ethnicity and gender. Results suggest self-discrepancies exist in the content o f self-characteristics and in the negativity that entrepreneurs associate with how they are perceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]